More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
She was fourteen and he was thirty-two, and this was the first and only meeting of these two remarkable monarchs. Both would eventually be accorded the title “the Great.” And between them, for decades, they would dominate the history of central and eastern Europe.
Traveling toward an unknown country, propelled by an empress’s sentimentality, a mother’s ambition, and the intrigues of the king of Prussia, an adolescent girl was launched on a great adventure.
Years later, in Russia, Peter said that this was “the happiest day of my life.”
“Call Simon Todorsky.”
Later, Frederick wrote, “I have had more trouble in accomplishing this business than if it had been the most important matter in the world.”
Montesquieu exposed Catherine to an early Enlightenment political philosophy that analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of despotic rule. She studied his thesis that there could be contradictions between a general condemnation of despotism and the conduct of a specific despot.
Even after she reached the Russian throne—where the autocrat was, by any definition, a despot—she tried to avoid excesses of personal power, and to create a government in which efficiency was guided by intelligence; in short, a benevolent despotism.
If I may be allowed to be frank, I would say about myself that I was a true gentleman with a mind more male than female, but, together with this, I was anything but masculine and, combined with the mind and character of a man, I possessed the attractions of a loveable woman. May I be pardoned for offering this candid expression of my feelings instead of trying to cover them a veil of false modesty.
You must know with whom you have to deal.… You will find that I have no other view than the greatest welfare and glory of the fatherland, and I wish for nothing but the happiness of my subjects.… I am very fond of the truth, and you may tell me the truth fearlessly, and argue with me without any danger if it leads to good results in affairs. I hear that you are regarded as an honest man by all.… I hope to show you by experience that people with such qualities do well at court. And I may add that I require no flattery from you, but only honest behavior and firmness in affairs.
During her life, Catherine never wavered in her conviction that an absolute monarchy was better suited to the needs of the Russian empire than rule by a small group of permanent officials.
When Voltaire was asked how he, who denied God, could take Holy Communion, he replied that he “breakfasted according to the custom of the country.”
The price of a serf, even one highly skilled, was often less than that of a prize hunting dog. In general, a male serf could be bought for between two hundred and five hundred rubles; a girl or woman would cost between fifty and two hundred rubles, depending on her age, talents, and comeliness. Serfs sometimes changed owners for no price at all. He or she could be bartered against a horse or a dog, and a whole family could be gambled away in a night of cards.
While Voltaire lived, Frederick of Prussia told him, “After your death, there will be no one to replace you”; when the philosopher was gone, the king said, “For my part, I am consoled by having lived in the age of Voltaire.”
“Why is almost the whole earth governed by monarchs?” Voltaire asked. “The honest answer is because men are rarely worthy of governing themselves.… Almost nothing great has ever been done in the world except by the genius and firmness of a single man combating the prejudices of the multitude.… I do not like government by the rabble.”
From there, she moved directly to an explanation of the need for absolutism in Russia. The sovereign was absolute, she said, “for there is no authority but that which centers in his single person that can act with a vigor proportionate to such a vast dominion.” Any other form of government risked weakness.
She accepted from Montesquieu a qualification of her advocacy of absolutism; this was embodied in her acceptance of the limitation of the supreme power of the Russian autocrat by certain “fundamental laws.” These “laws” were defined as traditions, habits, and institutions so deeply rooted in the history and life of a society that no monarch, however absolute, could or would act in opposition to them.
“The laws ought to be so framed as to secure the safety of every citizen as much as possible.… Political liberty does not consist in the notion that a man may do whatever he pleases; liberty is the right to do whatsoever the laws allow.…
“The use of torture is contrary to sound judgment and common sense,” she declared. “Humanity
To d’Alembert, she admitted, “For the sake of my empire, I have robbed Montesquieu without mentioning him by name. If he sees my work from the next world, I hope he will pardon me this plagiarism for the good of twenty million people. He loved humanity too well to take offense. His book is my ‘prayer book.’ ”
Frederick of Prussia called the Nakaz “a masculine, nervous performance worthy of a great man,” and made the empress a member of the Berlin Academy.
As her Enlightenment principles were battered in the assembly, Catherine, aware that she governed primarily through the support of the nobility, decided that she could not go further. Later, she commented:
In 1763, the second year of her reign, Catherine founded Russia’s first College of Medicine to train Russian doctors, surgeons, and apothecaries. Until a sufficient number of
At nine in the evening on October 12, Dimsdale inoculated Catherine in both arms with smallpox matter taken from a peasant boy named Alexander Markov, whom she subsequently ennobled.
By 1780, twenty thousand Russians had been inoculated; by 1800, two million.
At the time, the prevailing attitude toward the disease was fatalistic: people believed that, sooner or later, everyone must have it, and that some would survive and some would die. Most refused inoculation.
A famous icon of the Virgin at Varvarsky Gate became a magnet; day after day, crowds of diseased people swarmed around her feet. She became the deadliest center of contagion in the city.
Desperate townspeople, not knowing what their interrogators wished to hear, gave stock answers when asked whom they considered their lawful sovereign: “Whomever you represent,” they replied.
In the summer of 1775, King George III of England requested the loan—the rental, actually—of Russian troops to fight in America against his rebellious colonial subjects.
When I left you I tucked you in, and kissed you.… Tell me, my beautiful, my goddess, that you love me.… My sweetest, you dare not get out of health; I shall spank you for that.… I kiss you twenty-two million times.
Potemkin replied sternly, “It is your duty to remain at your post. Don’t be a fool and ruin your career.”
The history of her youth and young womanhood helps explain her relationships with favorites. She had been a fourteen-year-old stranger brought to a foreign land. At sixteen, she had married a psychologically crippled and physically blemished adolescent. She spent nine years untouched by this man in their marriage bed. She had no family: her mother and father were dead; her three children were spirited away at the moment of birth. As the years passed, she became caught up in a search for the Fountain of Youth. Today, there are various ways of prolonging the illusion of youth, but in Catherine’s
...more
From the year of her journey until the German invasion in 1941, and then the independence of Ukraine in 1991, these lands never passed from Russian hands.
With Franklin’s help, Jones took command of a French East Indiaman, a travel-worn merchant ship of nine hundred tons. Jones armed her with thirty cannon and named her Bonhomme Richard, after Franklin’s famous work Poor Richard’s Almanack.
At one point amid the carnage, the British captain called across his deck to Jones, “Has your ship struck her colors?” He was referring to the signal of surrender. Someone heard—or perhaps a writer sitting at his desk later imagined—Jones call back, “I have not yet begun to fight.”
During her reign, Catherine’s collection expanded to almost four thousand paintings. She became the greatest collector and patron of art in the history of Europe.
I hate fountains that torture water and force it into a course contrary to its nature.… In a word, Anglomania rules my plantomania.”
On the night of March 25, 1791, Mirabeau took two dancers from the opera home with him, slept with them, became violently ill, and, eight days later died. His departure removed the one figure whose political reputation and oratorical powers might have ensured the establishment of a constitutional monarchy.
Her defense of monarchy followed from her belief in the need for efficiency in administration and the preservation of public order: “Tell a thousand people to draft a letter, let them debate every phrase, and see how long it takes and what you get.” She hated to see order crumbling and anarchy looming in France because she knew something about anarchy; she had seen it in the Pugachev rebellion.
In 1792, she ordered the confiscation of a complete edition of the works of Voltaire. In
“It is not as easy as you think,” she replied. “In the first place, my orders would not be carried out unless they were the kind of orders which could be carried out. You know with what prudence and circumspection I act in the promulgation of my laws. I examine the circumstances, I take advice, I consult the enlightened part of the people, and in this way I find out what sort of effect my laws will have. And when I am already convinced in advance of good approval, then I issue my orders, and have the pleasure of observing what you call blind obedience.
That is the foundation of unlimited power. But, believe me, they will not obey blindly when orders are not adapted to the opinion of the people.”
